Hugh Spear's Blog

GSM World 2009 - just another iPhone beauty pageant

Forewarned is forearmed

I went to GSM World in Barcelona in 2007 and the person who picked my pocket bought a motorbike with my credit card! This year, I vowed, it would be different. I am now back in Sydney having made it there and back without being robbed, unless you count the cafe prices!

Captains Log

So what was there to report on you might be wondering? Well in 2007 the biggest story was of a company which didn't exhibit and their product which wasn't available. The company was Apple and the product, you've guessed it, was the iPhone. Everyone laughed that the biggest story wasn't even bothering to turn up. Well this year again we have the most obvious biggest story as the iPhone again, and again no Apple.  It is the biggest story now, not because the iPhone product has changed but because everyone else has piled in to join the 'me too' tribute.

For example this handset from Toshiba, the TG01 is a pretty nice looking device. Toshiba will bring all of their production qualities to the product that they have developed from their other businesses. But it can't be said that that they haven't at least nodded a debt to the iPhone in terms of industrial design.

Even Nokia with their 8800 seemed to be trying a bit too hard to have an iPhone.
Though as the photo shows, just when you thought it was a complete wannabee out pops a stylus and you start thinking of the P900! Especially once you look at the handwriting recognition.

Such was the desperation to have an iPhone that some manufacturers even employed designers to make their models a bit too close to the real thing. Why I wonder did Huawei make us delete all our photos of their touch-screen phone? Well we didn't let some strong arm tactics stop us getting the photo as you can see.

And Sony Ericsson seemed to be reaching a point of full convergence in an attempt to beat off the opposition in one fell swoop.

Their new handset the iDou  has 12.1 mega pixels of camera power, plus flash, something looking like a PSP in terms of user interface, touch screen super powered Walkman with oodles of memoery, oh and a phone.So whereas Mr Jobs from Apple wanted to merge an iPod, a Phone and the Internet into the iPhone; Sony Ericsson want to emphasise much more the multi-media player aspects of what they have. It does appear to be everything including the kitchen sink and I did hear a couple of commentators wondering if it smacked of desperation. Either way it will be a must-have toy for recreational users, so long as the battery life holds up.

So if everyone has an iPhone clone or at least something which may one day come off the production line rather than the 'artists impression'  drawing board, then how are we going to tell the difference between these devices? Well by the quality of their applications I hear you reply. Quite so, so that is the reason all have an App store. Pity the poor developer trying to support his or her application across so many environments. Makes you wonder whether there is a business in writing a runtime environment which works over each operating environment - but that would be java and probably not a wheel anyone wants to reinvent. Maybe web apps are the way forward?

One conclusion we can draw from this severe case of  "imitation being the sincerest form of flattery" is that the Mobile Internet is now very much a reality and whereas people only went there from old phones in small numbers, the iPhone has seen to it that people not only want to go there, but in some cases don't need to go there with any other kind of device. That is at least one bit of great news for Dialogue and its fabulous Mobile Site Builder. That has iPhone optimisation and I expect will be optimised for all these other devices once they hit our streets. Then you can really have a build once strategy and an easy life.

iPhone vs Android (HTC G1) - iPhone wins but Android is a future contender

First Look at the HTC G1

Having registered as an Android developer I could legitimately buy myself an unlocked HTC G1 Android phone. This early Christmas present would give me an insight into how far Google are likely to eat into the market which Apple are starting to own.

An encouraging article on the  "Google's Ambitious Android" gave me hope that the G1 would give Apple cause for concern.

At first sight the G1 is thicker and clunkier than the slim iPhone. It is thicker because it conceals a full Qwerty keyboard which levers out from the side. Whilst on the subject of input and controls it has a trackball, touch screen, volume control (similar to iPhone) and camera button on the edge and menu button, back button, home button and make call and end call buttons. So many controls you'd think it would make it easier to use. But unfortunately it didn't. I think I found that having to switch the phone's orientation every time I wanted to type something in was a bit annoying. That said it did make it easier to type in things like passwords than it was on the iPhone's soft keyboard.

I got everything working and everything except email access (IMAP) to Exchange seemed to work well. The Google applications worked especially well as you'd expect.  I particularly like the use of Contacts and Calendars which appeared to be just another view to the same things in Gmail. For the first time I didn't need to think about Synchronising, something which I have never got to work properly regardless of the device. They all fail eventually and you get forced to decide that one set of contacts should overwrite another. With Android at last you don't seem to need to do that. 

Android vs iPhone

Overall I'd say that Android is a promising O/S and there is good developer support and good commercial components backing the services provided. The G1 is a pretty good handset but no way as intuitive as the iPhone.  I've probably given the iPhone more of my time but as I recall I liked it from the very first moment. I think that this is the problem faced by the competition, Apple has put together a fantastic package, consumers have given it the 'thumbs-up' and the market share is reflecting that.

A recent article highlighted the success of the iPhone showing that it is number 2 in the world of Smartphones with 17.3% of the market. It has overtaken the Blackberry and both have chipped away at Nokia's dominance. Another article showed that the iPhone has 30% of the US market, and combined with Blackberry two thirds of the US smartphone market is spoken for. 

I guess it is a measure of the impact of the iPhone that all new smartphones need to compete with the feature set introduced by Apple: touch screen, tilt sensitivity, applications store etc. And there is absolutely no reason why the competition can't copy these features, they should even be able to improve on things like storage, camera quality (and phone quality). But putting these features into such an aspirational package is probably difficult and integrating so well with the market leading media retailing portal (iTunes) is probably impossible. 

But Google, more than any other brand has something really special to bring to mobile. The range of on-line Google products and the opportunity to make them mobile is tantalising. Indeed the iPhone already provides access to several of these products.  Couple this with the Open Handset Alliance and you have Apple taking on the rest of the world's handset manufacturers. 

So who now are the contenders for leadership in the Smartphone category?

Although, for my money, the G1 is not up to the job of knocking the iPhone off its perch, I wouldn't bet against Android in the longer run. These are two horses that are definitely in the race. However I'm starting to worry about Nokia who have been so dominant for so long. I hope they can really reinvent the smartphone paradigm. 

One would think that Windows Mobile could have got better sooner to really be a contender. They have some catching up to do and need to show more leadership in this market, can they do this without more internet bases assets? I'm not sure, but they may be wasting their dominance in enterprise email systems. RIM are rising to the challenge, especially with the Storm and they have a niche hold on the business market. I think long terms they will stay in their niche and hold onto it, but some of their market will be lost forever to cooler products. 

The new mobile battleground

The announcement of the iPhone 3G from Apple’s Steve Jobs, together with the detail of what will be possible with this device and details of its widespread availability; should stun the rest of the mobile world. However, several commentators have been remarkably underwhelmed.  I read some early reports of the impact of the new device on the world and they ranged from indicating that the iPhone would slightly increase its market share of the smartphone market, to claims that the introduction of 3G and GPS would not be enough to really have an impact.

My personal view is that we are about to witness a paradigm shift in the use of mobile phones which will redefine the future. It is quite simply the most exciting thing to happen in mobile in a dozen years. Here is my reasoning for this opinion:

1. iPhone beats Blackberry. The Blackberry is well recognised as the ‘must have’ device for the enterprise. However, the iPhone 3G has achieved the following to probably knock Blackberry off its perch:
   • Support Exchange natively. This is the single most important email system in the enterprise, and this support  alone will dent  Blackberry’s dominance.
   • Support Push-email. This will give the iPhone users the Blackberry-like experience. Another step towards unseating Blackberry.
   • Application support. The iPhone 3G SDK is providing application developers with the tools they need to provide ‘line-of-business’ enterprise applications to each and every employee. This should not be underestimated.
   • Price. At $199 the iPhone is now a realistic enterprise option.
   • Infiltration of Fortune 500 businesses. There is no better purchasing driver than seeing your fellow corporations taking the same steps.
2. iPhone beats Nokia. I have always admired Nokia’s ability to define the future with its devices. Right from the very first days of using a Nokia 2110 back in 1994 and basing my business around what Nokia had achieved in terms of mobile connectivity; I have always resisted betting against Nokia. And in spite of probably having a better list of features and usability that set the standard for mobile phones, I have to say that now the iPhone has moved ahead. Here are my reasons:
   • Featureset. The iPhone 3G has almost all the toys you need on a mobile device. Nokia has video calling and FM radio but that is about the only difference, other than the low specification of the iPhone camera.  But at least it is a good camera.
   • Application support. Nokia’s Series 60 has been around for 4 or 5 years and there are a few dozen applications available for the device. The iPhone has been around for a year and there are hundreds of applications available already. Add to this the ‘App Store’ that Apple plan, which is said to be worth $US 10bn during the first 18 months alone and you have some idea of the scale of the iPhone dominance in this area. Again, please do not underestimate the importance of this to the future.
   • iTunes. Nokia has its own music store, but how can it compete with something that was based around the market dominating iPod? I don’t think you can.
3. iPhone applications takes the mobile internet and makes it better. For nearly a decade the mobile internet has meant two things, email and browsing. Not web browsing but a cut down web known as WAP.  Although the original iPhone claimed that you didn’t need the ‘baby internet’, which was the internet sub-set created for mobile. It is my opinion that you do need to re-purpose existing internet sites to make them mobile device compatible. It is down to the physiology of being able to put the viewing device in the palm of your hand.  Facebook and many others have created iPhone versions of their applications and many are better than the grown-up web applications. But the iPhone now shows us the really impressive next step of the mobile internet and that is the creation of applications which use internet connectivity and do very specific jobs in the best way possible. For example the eBay application doesn’t expect you to browse, doesn’t expect you to use email or SMS, it does what you want it to do which is to find items you want and help you to ensure you buy them. There are heaps of other applications which also do very cool things, but most importantly there is an application development environment, from the OS to the development tools and the coding language that means that we will see an explosion of creativity.  I haven’t known this since I used Visual Basic for the first time in 1991 and realised that building software applications didn’t have to be geeky. Now for the first time we can do the same with mobile phones the most prevalent devices on the planet.
4. iPhone re-invents SMS. Well not exactly in terms of a point to point communication tool, but in terms of alerting and triggering applications. Apple has its own ‘push alert notification’ technology. I’m guessing that those guys at Apple realise that SMS is the most profitable mobile data on the planet and they want a part of it.

So where does this leave the rest of the mobile food chain. Lets consider the field I’m familiar with:

Handset manufacturers
Well although Apple has raised the bar as far as I am concerned,  there is little other than iTunes integration to prevent the competition from catching up and they can even be better in some respects. But they have to really work at it and take the iPhone very seriously.

Mobile Operators
Well there is a danger that they will be relegated to ISPs in this value chain. But they do control at least one billing relationship with the consumers and they do provide the bearer services for most mobile connectivity. The question is do they settle for this, or do they use their considerable resources to take more value from the market?  The pragmatic view is that it is very profitable to keep adding subscribers and to expand geographically, even though voice and data are fast becoming commoditised. There are still juicy areas of profit like SMS and roaming charges. However if you want to compete in areas like Mobile Advertising, (and which mobile operator doesn’t?) then you need to think about embracing the mobile application environment or investing in the fledgling businesses that can. There is also a tantalising question of whether, or when Apple and the mobile networks will work together to charge for content. I suspect that Apple wants to get a better revenue share deal than the mobile operators will allow at the moment, but lets see how this story unfolds.

Mobile Aggregators
My company Dialogue Communications is in this space, and we can see the iPhone as both an opportunity and a threat. Our Mobile Site Builder is already optimised for the iPhone and I’d urge any business to ensure it has a mobile site that looks good and works well on an iPhone. But there is a threat in the mobile content space from iTunes and a threat to the SMS business from the ‘push alert notifications’. The big area of opportunity is to embrace the applications components and to help the mobile operators to add the value they so keenly desire.

Content Providers
These are threatened by the closed shop of iTunes in many respects, although the largest companies can probably partner with iTunes. Again the opportunity is to get involved in iPhone application development and to create content portals for specific niches that can be more customised to the consumer’s preferences than iTunes.

Of course I could be wrong and the experts from the research organisations could and should be right. But  I'm not going to hang around waiting to see if I'm wrong I'll be acting on my hunches.